Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 26

Romney 2016!

Ben Domenech had a great headline in this morning’s Transom: “Romney 2016 is real and it is spectacular.” That’s based off the steady drip-drip-drip of pieces over the last eight weeks or so plus Byron York’s piece today. A few thoughts:

* I don’t know whether or not I ever blogged about this (turns out I did, obliquely), but throughout the 2012 cycle my working assumption was that Romney was likely to try again in 2016. When I would tell this to various Galley Friends, they dismissed it as more JVL crazy talk. Hey Kobe . . .

* Do I really for real think this is real? Oh yes. I believe that it will be a very short hop for the Romneys to talk themselves into “America needs me/him now.” And the early 2015 polling will show (a) that he does very well retrospectively against Obama and (b) exceptionally well in the GOP primary field, because of his enormous name ID. That could well be enough to nudge him in.

And if Hillary runs, then one of the big problems he faces–he even flip-flopped on not running for president again!–disappears, too, because she has the exact same problem and the media won’t be able to take after him without making her collateral damage. The Precious must be protected at all times.

Plus, he’ll have the money. I suspect that for the GOP donor class Romney remains the dream candidate. If he gets in, he’ll suck up all of the greenback-oxygen very quickly and will make it hard for other candidates to raise a critical mass of dollars.

Plus-plus: What else is he going to do with himself? For a guy who’s “not a career politician” he spends an awful lot of time running around chasing elected office and aping the sort of thing that career politicians do.

* Here’s the swerve: I don’t know that he’d be the worst candidate in the world this time around. He’s so thoroughly vetted that there is nothing voters could possibly learn about him. At this point he might be the platonic ideal of the generic Republican candidate, with very little energizing upside, but zero hidden downside. Every conceivable angle–pro and con–is baked into his cake. If you believe that’s enough to win in 2016, then maybe he’s okay. At the very least, running him as the nominee in 2016 would be, in it’s own weird way, a radical new electoral proposition coming from Republicans. No one has tried it in the modern era and it becomes difficult to predict how it would work.

* Then there’s the question of the field. People have assumed for two years now that the 2016 GOP field won’t be the 2012 clown show, but rather an all-star line-up of awesome. Christie. Walker. Jindal. Rubio. Ryan. Huckabee, maybe. That’s what it looked like 20 months ago.

Then Rubio pushed all-in with a bad immigration bill. The Bridgegate thing hit Christie. Jindal’s in-state approval rating tanked. Ryan looks to prefer the House. Walker is in the fight of his life for reelection. Jeb Bush inserted himself into the conversation. And Rick Perry began rehabilitating himself.

Now the field looks much more like Perry, Cruz, Rand Paul, and, possibly, Jeb. With Ben Carson making noises about getting in. And suddenly the clown show looks like it might be coming back to town.

I posit that it’s possible the Republican field in 2016 could be much weaker than people anticipate.

If that happens–if Walker loses and Christie can’t recover his mojo and Jindal never takes off and Rubio either decides not to go, or can’t escape his immigration problems and Ryan stands pat and Huckabee chooses to keep making money–then there will be a moment of chaos and panic in Republican circles as the party realizes that the line-up they were expecting isn’t going to appear. And in that moment, there will be the opportunity for both a fresh face we haven’t looked at before, and for Romney 5.0.

Exit question: This is a serious question–not me being snarky. If I told you that you had to have either Jeb or Romney 5.0 as the nominee, who would you pick? And I’ll ask the question two ways: (1) For governing ability and (2) For electability purposes.

I’ll hang up and listen to you off the air.

Keith Olbermann, Reborn

Yes, it’s six minutes long. WATCH THE WHOLE THING. Because by the time he gets to Red Ruffing–“You don’t know who Red Ruffing was. Do you?”–it’s already the most epic TV baseball segment, evah. And you’re only half way home.

An instant classic that goes right on the top shelf with George F. Will’s Sports Machine.

Dangerously high levels of awesome. Because while the surface is anti-Jeter, under the hood it’s really anti-Millennial.

 

Don’t Go on ‘The Daily Show’

Maybe the smartest thing Megan McArdle has written. Reminder: This is not the first time we’ve seen that The Daily Show acts in bad faith.

Also, another reminder: Jon Stewart is kind of a dick.

Chris & Me

I don’t usually do this sort of thing, but over at TWS I’ve got a little essay about comic books, my best friend, parenthood, and mortality.

Coming Soon: The Seven Deadly Virtues

As of today the good folks at Templeton Press have sent my new book, The Seven Deadly Virtues, off to the printer. I’d like to tell you about it, since, unlike What to Expect, this project has been shrouded in relative secrecy.

First off, it’s not really “my” book. After What to Expect, which took a little more than five years to write, I realized that writing books by yourself is for suckers. So for The Seven Deadly Virtues (I’m open to suggestions on how to short-hand the title; “7DV”?) I called a bunch of my favorite writers and asked them to each write an essay. All I had to do was edit them, shuffle the chapters into a semi-coherent order, and write an introduction. It was an embarrassingly small amount of work. The product is awesome because the secret, it turns out, is getting writers who are better than you to do all the heavy lifting. And I’ve got the 1998 Yankees.

No, really: P. J. O’Rourke, Christopher Buckley, Andy Ferguson, Matt Labash, Mollie Hemingway, James Lileks, Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg Joe Queenan, Larry Miller, Christopher Caldwell, Iowahawk, Sonny Bunch, Christine Rosen, Andrew Stiles, Michael Graham, and Rita Koganzon. That, my friends, is a New Jack Murderer’s Row.

So what’s it all about? Remember Bill Bennett’s wonderful Book of Virtues? It’s like that, but funny. The Seven Deadly Virtues is a meditation on virtue and the human condition and filled with yucks. Yet also, amazingly enough, some philosophical seriousness, too. Imagine Aristotle crossed with . . . well, I don’t know who, exactly. Maybe Rodney Dangerfield. Or Jerry Seinfeld. Or Evelyn Waugh. It’s just funny. You’ll love it.

Of course, I would say that. But I truly believe it. I love how this book turned out and I’m really proud to be part of a project with so many writers I admire. And I think you’ll love it, too.

I’ll be redesigning the site in a few weeks and then moving into pimp mode as we get closer to the release date, October 28.

Now, go order copies for you and everyone you love. It’ll be a fantastic Halloween (or holiday of your choice) gift.

The Greatness of Triple H

If you’re into podcasting, and wrestling, Talk is Jericho is about as good as it gets. (Jericho is such podcasting gold that his episode on the Nerdist podcast was absolutely the best interview Chris Hardwick ever did. Even better than the Mitch Hurwitz episode.) In two recent episodes, Jericho has a long interview with Triple H. I cannot possibly recommend it enough.

Some thoughts:

* How great is Jericho? He plays the audio of one of Triple H’s first on camera interviews, when he had just been handed the gimmick of French heel Jean-Paul Levesque. His French accent is atrocious. And Jericho says he sounds Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Gold.

(The bow on top of this incident is that as he’s getting ready to do the spot, Triple H notices that the interviewer, Gordon Solie, is totally hammered. One of the crew members whispers to Triple H, as he’s walking to the camera, “If he collapses, try to clothesline him so you can draw some heat.”)

* Triple H has long been my favorite modern-era wrestler. (Modern era, for me, meaning, guys I watched primarily as an adult and not a kid.) I don’t know that he’s the best talent of his generation–though he’s certainly top five. He was just my favorite. Now I understand why: He’s a normal guy.

I don’t mean normal in the sense of being just an average joe. He’s clearly not. But while most wrestlers have junior varsity rock-star lives, Triple H seems to have approached his profession like any high-achieving, ambitious guy in other industries, might: He focused on the wrestling business early, knew he wanted to work in the WWE, and set about learning everything there was about the company and its history. Then, when he got hired, he showed deference to elders and waited his turn while working hard. He was the first guy at the office and the last guy to leave. He hung around waiting for the bosses to ask him to do stuff and when they did, he said yes. That’s how you make yourself indispensable. And how you succeed. You say yes. You get into position so that when the boss tosses you the ball, you’re ready to catch and run. But you never demand that they throw it to you. That’s for diva wide-outs and office d-bags.

Where most wrestlers approach their jobs as a lifestyle, Triple H seems to have approached it like a career.

Whether you want to be a doctor or a writer or anything else, this is a pretty good formula for success. (And it’s a formula that’s anathema to most of the Millennials I see who want to start their careers in upper-management and then work to start co-opting ownership straight away.)

* In a weird way, Triple H has lived the wresting equivalent of Charles Murray’s Curmudgeon’s Guide.

* Not really being a Shawn Michaels guy, I never fully understood how influential Michaels was to late-’90s wrestling. I guess he really was The Man.

* Triple H tells a story about his first night out with the Kliq. Whoa.

I’ll leave you with this: The tag-match in which Triple H tore his quad muscle, but finished the match anyway. The last four minutes of this is one of the best bits of storytelling I’ve ever seen in the ring. Epic.

An iWatch for the Leftorium?

A stupid Apple Watch question: Does it come in a left-handed version? Because if you’re a lefty who wears your watch on your right wrist, you’re reaching across the face of the watch to use the digital crown, which seems to be the primary input.

If you’re a weirdo like me–a righty who wears his watch on his righthand–it’s even worse. I’ll be reaching across the watch face to use the digital crown with my non-dominant hand.

Good thing someone just bought a kick-ass surf watch . . .

RGIII: Calling All Markers

An honest question for Redskins fans: What level of success does Robert Griffin III need to achieve as a quarterback to make his acquisition worthwhile for the franchise?

For example, if he’s Elway, then he was a bargain. If he’s Achille Smith, he’s a disaster.

But what if he’s Brad Johnson? Or Joe Flacco? Or Steve McNair?

I’m looking for analogies here in terms of both numbers and longevity. And I wonder where the line is under which drafting him at the price the Redskins paid clearly becomes a mistake that, with the benefit of hindsight, would not be repeated.

Great Moments in Law Enforcement

NYC edition.

As always, the problem isn’t (just) the mistake–it’s that (1) The mistake seems to have been made in bad faith; and (2) There seems to be no institutional corrective applied to the officers who made the mistake. Most workers would expect to get fired if they made a really bad on-the-job mistake like this one.

Also, as Conor Friedersdorf notes, this is another case where the public disorder seems to have been created by the police. In situations like this one, it’s helpful to think about whether or not there were ways the police officers could have acted which would have obtained their objectives without a beating and arrest. If there were such courses of actions–and in this case, it certainly seems so–then the course of action they did take is not acceptable. The use of force by a state agent should be the last resort, not just one option among many, depending on how the agent of the state is feeling at the given moment.

Site Is Slightly Jacked Up

Comments don’t seem to be working and lots of other little things are going weird.

I’m working on it; I think I have to update Thesis. But this may take a while.

Like, several weeks. Thanks to the new WordPress.

Update: Look at the big brain on Brad!